Top Tips from the Australasian Fundraising Forum 2014

After a fantastic couple of days soaking up so much great content from so many talented fundraisers we thought we would just pick out 13 very practical suggestions from some of the speakers. The generosity of everyone who spoke and shared their stories and, more importantly, their facts was extraordinary. It really is a great privilege to work in a sector where everyone is genuinely committed to everyone else doing better. Thank you to all the speakers and to F+P Magazine for creating such a valuable opportunity to share, learn and connect.

Edm’s sent on a Tuesday at 10am were 3 times more effective than the same time on a Thursday

Popups on the website during tax appeal increased online donations by 30%

Put Donate Now buttons in the middle of edm text

Link your auction items to outcome specific price points with an ask from a beneficiary

Do People Trust Charities?

Trust is the most precious asset for charities. It is fundamental for all giving but it is fragile and easily eroded. We conducted a large scale public survey of over 2,000 Australians to understand and track their levels of trust in charities.

Engaging Donors

As acquisition becomes more expensive, less predictable and high volumes harder to find, we must focus more of our energy on retaining the precious donors we already have. Measuring attrition, lifetime value and upgrade rates are great indicators of loyalty. Measuring multiple relationships is a really good indicator of your success in “cross selling”, or extending, your donors. But these database measures don’t tell us the full story of how engaged our donors really are. After all, is the habitual monthly donor who has forgotten to cancel really the same as the passionate but periodic cash donor?

To see if our communications are really making a difference we need to understand and measure what constitutes being engaged. To our mind there are both behavioural and emotional indicators of engagement:

Advocating on behalf of the charity (proactive and defensive)

Participating and entering into dialogue with the charity

Influence exerted and introductions made: corporate, families, HINW

Attitude – recognition and attribution of success to the charity

Attendance –service usage, event attendance

Volunteerism – short term project roles through to long term commitment

Passion indicators – is the charity their favorite, do they associate their identity with the cause, are they proud of their association?

Brand appreciation – understanding and valuing the role the charity plays in changing the world

From research conducted with five leading charities in Australia we have identified some of the key traits that predict whether people will give a second gift when asked. They key drivers were found to be about identity, passion and relative importance.

The Supporter Engagement Score

This year we are launching a study tohelp increase loyalty and lifetime value by measuring and improving supporter engagement.